283 Kenilworth Ave.
Asking price: $1.6-million
Lot size: 22.17 by 110 feet
Taxes: $8,357 (2015)
Agent: Doreen Kosanovic, sales representative, ReMax Ultimate, Realty Inc. Brokerage
The current owners of 283 Kenilworth Ave. have one request of buyers of their home: Don’t install blinds. Or drapes. Or shades.
“If you’ve noticed, there are no curtains in the house,” Georgia Henderson said.
“Despite all of the glass,” added David Peachey, gesturing to the wall of windows on either side of the top floor.
And it’s not an anomaly. On each floor, three of the four sides of the home are open to the light. But this isn’t a glass box of a home. It’s more private than that.
“When they were designing the house, they made it so most of the living happens away from the immediate outside – in the middle of the home,” Ms. Henderson said.
“But whatever floor you’re on, you’re always connected to the outside because of the light,” Dr. Peachey added.
The back story
Light is very central to the design of 283 Kenilworth and that’s why Ms. Henderson and Dr. Peachey think it’s important to keep the home curtain-free.
“The whole theory of the house is space, openness and light,” Dr. Peachey said.
The home was built in 2008 by Richard Hou and Juan Fontana, who had the idea of creating a multilevel, open-concept home with what they called a “tree-house effect.”
Dr. Peachey explained that effect was achieved by creating an African mahogany staircase that floats and zigzags through the home and draws your eye up, accentuating its height. It’s solid – there is no sway – but it’s also open and allows air and light to slip through its steps and permeate the house.
This ethos was exactly what captured Ms. Henderson and Dr. Peachey when they came across the home in 2010.
“We wanted … something a little different, something that would speak to us,” Ms. Henderson said.
But when their agent, Doreen Kosanovic, suggested they venture out to the Beaches, the couple – who had always lived closer to downtown in neighbourhoods such as the Annex – wasn’t sure.
“I said I’m never moving to the Beaches, it’s another city,” Dr. Peachey said with a chuckle. “But I spent eight minutes in the house and I turned to Doreen and said, ‘Go buy that house.’ I stopped looking. This was it.”
Beyond the way that light interacts with the interior, the home is also distinctive because of its multiple levels. It’s hard to figure out exactly how many floors the home has. For example, the kitchen sits in the middle of the home, sunken half-a-flight down from the dining room, but only a few steps below the living room, which is on its other side.
And there is an oversized landing pad with a fireplace between the dining room and the “mezzanine” floor (which houses two bedrooms and two bathrooms), which is used as a TV room. The top floor is dedicated to the master suite.
In addition to these levels, the home also has two decks: one narrow balcony off the mezzanine level and then a spacious deck off the master suite. The other outdoor spaces – the backyard and the front yard – got complete makeovers under Ms. Henderson’s and Dr. Peachey’s ownership. Working with NAK Design Strategies and Kim Price Landscape Design, they took the generic green spaces and transformed them into little sanctuaries.
“The whole design concept was to build a free-flowing extension of the house,” Dr. Peachey said.
In the backyard, the couple played with its split-level nature and added a waterfall wall that has a dozen or so globes that glow at night. The first level is basically an extension of the inside living room, connected by a series of windows that open. The second level has space for an outdoor dining table and behind that is the car park, which exits onto a quiet lane.
“We’ve kept in touch with the designers and when they came back and looked at the landscaping, Juan said something like, ‘Yes, if we had done [the backyard], this is what it would have looked like,’” Dr. Peachey said.
Favourite features
Picking favourites is not an easy task for the owners.
“It depends on the day,” Dr. Peachey said. “Some days it’s the living room and its connection to the outdoors. Other days it’s the office. It’s quiet, wonderful and feels like a privilege to work in.”
For Ms. Henderson, the best spot to curl up with a book in the home changes with the weather.
“It’s almost seasonal,” she said. “For example, it’s very cozy upstairs on the couch with the fireplace, being able to look out onto the snow [on the top-floor deck].”
The master suite also contains another memorable feature of the home: its disappearing mirror. There are very few walls in the bedroom (with the exceptions of a toilet stall and closets); meaning you can see into the bathroom from the bed.
To stop light from being blocked from the western windows, the bathroom vanity is almost like a kitchen island. But with a little sleight of hand (actually the press of a button), a mirror magically appears.
“So you’ve got this bathroom space, but you want some privacy? Well you just put up the mirror,” Dr. Peachey said.
“It’s a very clean design,” Ms. Henderson said. “There is nothing about this house that hems you in.”
And for the couple, that is the beauty of 283 Kenilworth Ave.: It’s a freeing place to live thanks to its openness, light and connection to the exterior.
“This is not a home where you go to collapse at the end of the day,” Ms. Henderson said. “It’s where you go to be revived cause you get to come home and come into the light.”
